ADI Boosts DSP Performance

Recognizing that performance density is a key metric in many DSP-based systems, Analog Devices today launched a new generation of TigerSHARC processors by claiming the industry's highest performance per dollar, per watt or per square inch of board space.

Designated ADSP-TS201/202/203, the new processors deliver up to 1800 MFLOPS per Watt, 85 MFLOPS per dollar and 3600 MFLOPS per square inch, according to the company. The company said the new members of the TigerSHARC family achieve 4.8 billion multiply accumulates per second (GMACS) and 3.6 billion floating-point operations per second (GFLOPS) at 600 MHz.

Through fabrication and design collaboration with IBM Microelectronics the devices become the first to integrate 24 Mbits of embedded DRAM on a DSP. Occupying approximately one quarter the die area of SRAM, embedded DRAM reduces power consumption because leakage per bit is less than 1/100th that of SRAM. In addition, embedded DRAM has lower susceptibility to memory system errors, known as soft-error rates (SER).

This on-chip memory is coupled with internal bandwidth of up to 38.4 Gbytes/second.

At $34.95 each in quantities of 10,000 units, ADSP-TS203 sets a new price point for the TigerSHARC processor family The first low-cost offering in the line, the part achieves 86 MFLOPS/dollar, the company said.

All three TigerSHARC processors are pin-compatible and are available in a 25 mm x 25 mm, 576-ball BGA package. The ADSP-TS201 is offered at 500 and 600 MHz with 24 Mbits of on-chip memory while the ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 are offered at 500 MHz with 12 Mbits and 4 Mbits of on-chip memory, respectively. Per-unit pricing for the ADSP-TS201, ADSP-TS202 and ADSP-TS203 in 10,000 units at 500 MHz is $299, $149 and $34.95 respectively.